No Immunity

thought he could move that fast. The guy wasn’t young. The big guy, Brad, missed him entirely.
    For a moment she lost sight of the thug in the shadows of the building, then he moved and she couldn’t so much see him as make out a darker black that could have been anything. She had to keep looking back at it to remember which shadow was his.
    Tchernak was pulling out. She tensed, started her engine.
    Still camouflaged by shadows, the thug eased toward the courtyard. It didn’t take a Nobel researcher to figure out his next move. He was just waiting till Brad cleared out. Her he hadn’t even noticed.
    She hoped Sarita’s mother could get to a phone fast. Or bang on the wall. The complex was full of people. She could scream and have neighbors pouring in from both directions. Living in a place like this, she’d know how to take care of herself and her child.
    Brad pulled out.
    She had to follow him. He didn’t know where the boys were, but he knew something. He was the only lead she had. There wasn’t time to wait here. Besides, what did she think she was going to do to stop the thug? If she could have handled him, she wouldn’t have ended up trussed like Sunday dinner in her own office. She started the engine, stepped on the gas, then eased her foot off, picked up her cell phone, dialed 911, and gave them the address. “Man threatening a child in Unit Four.” She hung up before they could question her. The police would have her phone number on the screen. Could they pull up the make and license of her car too? She couldn’t wait around to find out.
    She gave a last look at Sarita’s door. She liked the little girl, she realized with a start. But the boys were her first priority. She had to find them. She couldn’t let Brad’s Jeep out of sight. She had to get to the boys. She stepped hard on the gas and shot through the intersection. Brad was barely doing the speed limit. It wasn’t till she had settled in half a block behind that she realized she hadn’t heard any police siren.

CHAPTER 23

    The woman in the morgue was no farm laborer, no illegal immigrant beholden to Luis Vargas. Well-cared-for hands and feet like hers wouldn’t have survived a day of hard labor in the fields. So why had Sheriff Fox latched on to that explanation? Kiernan wondered. To foist blame on her? Or was it a sidebar to something else?
    When she walked out of the saloon, Kiernan wasn’t prepared for the utter black, broken only to her right by a lone set of headlights mounting First Street from the highway and, to her left, by a blinking red neon AR. Doubtless the place that served the mediocre ‘amburgers that she was not going to get a chance to eat. The windows of the other shops were dark as a ghost town. And the silence... In the city there was the hum of streetlights, the roar and grind of acceleration and braking, bursts of music, conversation, dogs barking, doors shutting—always something. But here the only sound was the night wind scratching the sidewalk and her rubber-soled shoes slapping it. She felt as if the scene were not quite real, governed by rules she didn’t know. In the city there was safety in numbers. She knew how to work those numbers, to find the ally, the distraction, the group to use as a shield. Here there was nothing.
    She hurried up the sidewalk and crossed to the covered walk by the morgue. Wind smacked her collar against her neck as if taunting her with the inadequacy of her cotton jacket. She had forgotten how cold nights were in the dry and treeless desert. Her arms were already pressed against her sides, but the attempt at warmth was useless, one cold body part wedged against another.
    The mortuary was dark, boasting no viewing-room light to outline a burglar. For a place with an unlocked back door, keeping a front-room light on all night would be an uncalled-for extravagance. She hurried on, wishing she had used the daylight to note how far the end of the block was and if an alley looped back. In autopsies she had uncovered bodies layer by layer, first observing clothing, then scrutinizing the skin, and finally peeling back the skin and snipping the ribs. Often, by then, her exterior examinations prepared her for findings inside. Building searches should be the same. And tonight was like being led blindfolded, handed a scalpel, and told to find the liver. Or in this case the L tattoo. If Fox’s tale about the L tattoo was not just bait, not just a setup.
    Two storefronts were dark, and